Peshawar man arrested for 'sextortion' hacked Snapchat accounts of two US women too

A Peshawar man arrested on the complaint of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on charges of sextortion (webcam blackmail) of a US-based minor girl had also hacked the Snapchat accounts of two other US women, revealed Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

On Wednesday night, the FIA's Cyber Crime Wing arrested Anas Farooq in Phase VI area of Hayatabad neighbourhood of the provincial capital on charges of child pornography and criminal intimidation, reported Dawn.

Deputy Director of the FIA Cyber Crime Wing Tahir Khan told a news conference here that a local court had granted the physical remand of the accused to the agency for two days to probe the hacking and blackmailing charges.

He said that Farooq revealed during the investigation that he had also hacked the Snapchat accounts of two other US-based women, reported Dawn.Tahir Khan said that the FBI had shared the details of the accused forcing a Virginia-based minor girl into sextortion.

"Though the agency has investigated many cases of child pornography, this is the first trans-national cybercrime linked to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," he said.

Farooq told the investigators that he used his Instagram account to befriend girls and lured them to give him their passwords, which he later used to hack their Snapchat accounts.

He said that after finding compromising photos and videos on Snapchat accounts, the culprits used that material to blackmail their victims and engaged them into "sextortion", reported Dawn.

On July 1, the FBI had received information that a minor girl from the Reston area in the Virginian state of the US had been subjected to 'sextortion' after her account was hacked by an unknown person.

The accused later tried to coerce the girl into webcam blackmail and shared her compromising pictures with her Snapchat contacts, reported Dawn.

( With inputs from ANI )

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